The Wizard of the Kremlin
Olivier Assayas's new drama about the spin doctor who helped Vladimir Putin ascend to become President of Russia is hampered by its clumsy framing device and some woeful miscasting
The increasingly porous line between entertainment and politics is the central theme of The Wizard of the Kremlin. Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) is the theatre director and reality TV producer earmarked as the man to help position Vladimir Putin as the successor to the ailing Boris Yeltsin. "It's the same job, I'm merely suggesting that you graduate to the next level,” he’s told when he protests that he’s unqualified for a role in politics. “Stop making up stories, start inventing reality."
This is fertile territory for Olivier Assayas, or at least it should be. Sadly, The Wizard of the Kremlin is a laborious affair, immediately hampered by its framing device, which involves Baranov telling his story to a journalist (Jeffrey Wright). Why Baranov needs to explain Russian political machinations to a man well-versed in it is never clear, but whatever dynamism Assayas attempts to whip up through his filmmaking is immediately flattened by Dano's dispassionate narration.
Assayas has allowed his actors to proceed without Russian accents, but the refined British delivery adopted by the woefully miscast Dano is as distractingly inauthentic as any attempt at a Russian inflexion would have been. Jude Law successfully exudes a steely menace as Putin, but we don’t get enough of him, while Alicia Vikander and especially Jeffrey Wright are given nothing to work with. Assayas generates brief flashes of energy and intrigue as he romps through modern Russian history, but there’s little insight to be found in a misjudged project that feels like a waste of everyone’s talents.
Released 17 Apr by Signature Entertainment; certificate 15